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With My WholeHeart - Psalm 86:11-12
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 86:11-12
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 86:11-12 The prayer to ‘knit my heart unto thee’ is as poetic as it is profound. Weaving the sinews of our will into the will of God echoes the prayer of Jesus as he faced the cross: ‘Not what I want but what you want’ (Matthew 26.39b nrsv). His example shows us that it is …
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 90:10, 12
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 90:10, 12
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 90:10, 12 This prayer also swims against the tide of our culture where youthfulness is coveted and ageing dreaded. Yet in spite of the worship of agelessness, where the vitamin pills are the sacraments of the day and the workout a religious ritual, we can never escape the i…
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 26:1-2
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 26:1-2
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 26:1-2 Enough of sin! Here is the portrait of a blameless believer, someone who in all honesty before God cannot point to any wilful act of disobedience. And yet. Even with a conscience clear before God this plaintiff appears to plead with the Judge of all to examine him fo…
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 27:9
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 27:9
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 27:9 In St Paul’s famous essay on love he writes about how one day we will see God face to face but for now we see ‘through a glass, darkly’ (1 Corinthians 13.12 kjv). It’s a poetic phrase conveying the original Greek which literally says that we see through a glass not dar…
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 24:1, 3-4
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 24:1, 3-4
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 24:1, 3, 4 God is the Lord of earth and heaven. The Lord’s Prayer is for the fusion of the two. Asking for God’s will to be done in earth as it is done in heaven is a prayer for the earthing of heaven. The rebellion in the Garden of Eden drove a wedge between the two realms…
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 69:21-22
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 69:21-22
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 69:21-22 Desolation is when you find yourself estranged from both friends and God. To sense that you are rebuked by God breaks the heart. If ever there were grounds for self-pity then these are they, when no one else will offer you pity or comfort...
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 57:8
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 57:8
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 57:8 Whatever we fix on to in the end absorbs us, so much so that we become dependent on it. That dependency becomes a way of life, integrated into our being. It’s as if we were made to be dependent. ‘No man is an island’, and even those loners who seem so independent of ot…
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 112:7-8
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 112:7-8
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 112:7-8 A sign of the heart established in God is that it does not shrink. Nor is it ‘afraid of any evil tidings’. The reason for this is that ‘unto the godly there ariseth up light in the darkness’ (v. 4). That light is none other than the mercy of God which rescues us fro…
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 28:8
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 28:8
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 28:8 Through all his trials and tribulations St Paul urged others to discover with him that God’s strength is made perfect in human weakness, and that his grace is always sufficient. These are discoveries we do not always wish to make! They involve us in situations where we…
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 31:27
With My WholeHeart - Psalm 31:27
by SPCK - James Jones
Psalm 31:27 Jesus, of all people, knew the human heart. He knew how fickle the heart could be. He could see what flowed from it and knew what it was capable of, both good and bad. I don’t think any human being would dissent from that assessment. The heart is like a rudderless bo…
Journeying with Luke - Passion - Holy Week
Journeying with Luke - Passion - Holy Week
by SPCK - Woodward, Gooder and Pryce
5 Passion – Holy Week Exploring the text In the previous chapter we noted the way in which the theme of temptation weaves its way through the whole of the Gospel of Luke, reaching its climax at Jesus’ crucifixion where he is tempted three times – first by the leaders, then by the…
Journeying with Luke - Ordinary Time 2
Journeying with Luke - Ordinary Time 2
by SPCK - Woodward, Gooder and Pryce
8 Ordinary Time 2 Exploring the text We noted in the last chapter that chapters 7—18 of Luke’s Gospel, from which are drawn the passages read during Ordinary Time, contain the vast majority of Luke’s parables. Luke is well known for many things but perhaps the most important are …
Journeying with Luke - The Easter Narratives
Journeying with Luke - The Easter Narratives
by SPCK - Woodward, Gooder and Pryce
6 The Easter narratives Exploring the text Without a doubt the story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus must be one of the best-loved of the resurrection stories. Like so much else in Luke’s Gospel, its themes remind us of some of Luke’s major emphases th…
Hymn: Within those years and at that time
Hymn: Within those years and at that time
by Andrew Pratt
Within those years and at that time, all shame will turn to praise, as God will usher in the peace not seen in former days. Then singing will displace our sighs and hope will flood each heart. A festival will be ordained and all will bear a part. Verses 3-4 follow Tune: BARCHESTE…
Journeying with Luke - Christmas and Epiphany